Age of BootyReview

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Grab a bottle of rum and take to the high seas.

By Ryan Geddes

If there's one thing Xbox Live Arcade has been missing, it's a pirate-themed strategy game. How that oversight went uncorrected as long as it did is a mystery to me, but developer Certain Affinity finally stepped up to make things right.

Released today on Xbox Live, Age of Booty is a well-crafted game with sharp humor, slick presentation and an addictive multiplayer setup. Strategy fans beware -- Age of Booty's online modes will definitely hook you.

The basics are ultra-simple. You control a pirate ship that's part of a team of buccaneers bent on their own enrichment. The naval battlefield is made up of hexagonal tiles, and moving from one to another is as simple as pointing and clicking.

Your ship and the towns you capture with it are upgradable, but you'll need to marshal the right resources first. Scattered around the map, you'll find wood, gold and rum, and different combinations of each are used depending on what you're upgrading -- towns require gold and wood, while ships need rum and wood.

Choosing the right resources to collect and then managing them correctly is key to winning battles in Age of Booty. The goal for each stage in the single-player campaign (there are 21) is a bit different, but most revolve around working with AI teammates to capture towns. Each town will net you a different mix of resources, which you can then use to bump up your ship's armor, cannon or speed. In true strategy game fashion, each upgrade choice you make comes with a tradeoff. Adding a cannon slows you down, for example, and you'll need to balance it out with speed.

Arrgh - ye be owned, laddie.

But most of what you'll be doing in Age of Booty is simply sailing around. Things like firing at enemy ships, capturing bases and picking up floating supply crates are handled automatically when your ship sails onto an adjacent hex tile. This keeps the gameplay focused mainly on strategy and not on action (you'll never lose a fight because you didn't mash a fire button fast enough). Sail up to a neutral town and your ship will start firing away, wearing the town's defenses down to nothing. Once it's crushed, you can capture it by remaining next to it until your flag flies above it. If you have enough resources, you can upgrade its defenses to thwart your enemy, who's also trying to take as many towns as possible.

Once a town is yours, it comes with benefits. In addition to producing resources, it will also heal you when you're next to it and fire on enemy ships if they get too close. A good strategy is to hang out next to your town and fire on opposing pirates as they sail by. It's double the firepower, and you're being healed the whole time. Now that's strategy, matey.

You may be a genius at Age of Booty, but your AI teammates are not, unfortunately. Because you only ever control one ship in the game, you have no say over where your compatriots go or when they do it. If you decide it's a good idea to take out the unsuspecting town of Svensson before it knows what hit it, you have no way of communicating that to your team.

That means you have to go where they go, and that's not always a winning strategy. It would be nice to be able to select points on the minimap (which can be easily brought up at the touch of a button) and send your teammates there. It doesn't help that you can't zoom all the way out on the map to check out the real-time movements of all the players. The minimap is thorough and easy to use, but I found myself wishing the right analog stick allowed me to pull much farther back from the action than it does.

But Age of Booty was clearly designed to be played by multiple humans, and that aspect of the game works very well. If you can communicate well with your teammates, you can wreak havoc on the enemy as they sail around aimlessly. On the flip side, a game played between two well-matched human teams can be an intense battle of wits in which the advantage flips back and forth several times before one side makes the tiniest fatal error. Choosing the wrong time to attack a town or deploying your special item in the wrong spot could do you in.

I've always mistrusted sporks.

In addition to towns, home bases and enemy ships, there are a smattering of other things on the high seas to keep things interesting. Neutral merchant ships can be sunk for valuable Curse crates, which contain items like bombs and whirlpools. These special items can be deployed against enemy ships and towns for maximum mischief. There are also villages that can be fairly easily sacked for resources, so if you don't hold many towns you can still gather goods for upgrading your ship.

Aside from the AI troubles in the single-player campaign, Age of Booty is a well-balanced strategy game that's simple to learn and satisfying to pick up and play. It also includes an excellent map editor that's incredibly simple to use and let's you share your creations with friends in Local and Xbox Live private matches. The animations, character designs and artwork are fun, too -- max out your ship's speed and you'll see flames shooting out of the stern. There's also some great humor sprinkled throughout, but the developers stopped short of going overboard with the pirate speak.

The Verdict

If you have a group of like-minded friends (or are interested in making some), Age of Booty is an addictive online strategy game that rewards communication and teamwork. It&#Array;s simple to grasp, but there&#Array;s enough depth and balance to please hardcore players. The single-player mode, however, is damaged by uncooperative AI teammates who seem to be lone wolves more than a band of pirate brothers. Overall though, Age of Booty is a winner. Enjoy it with a tankard of your finest grog.